The Rape of Europa

by Charles FitzRoy

  For Dolce, the Rape of Europa possessed a similar truth to nature. Titian’s compositions were seen to be entirely original, showing true invention (the concept of invenzione was very highly regarded in the Renaissance). It was the combination of the extraordinarily lifelike depiction of everything he painted and his astonishing use of colour that singled Titian out from his contemporaries. Dolce contrasted this with the more stylized creations of the school of disegno, where artists made careful use of a series of preparatory drawings to create their compositions.

  Vasari, who was an important painter in his own right, included Titian in his second edition of the Lives of the Artists, published in 1568 after he met the painter on a visit to Venice in 1566. He praised works such as the Rape of Europa for the way that they ‘seemed alive’. Vasari gave a sensitive analysis of the work and of Titian’s technique, showing how the painter was able to achieve his effects by painting in a much bolder and freer style than he had used in his youth:

  Titian also painted a Europa crossing the ocean on the bull. These paintings are held most dear because of the vitality Titian gave to his figures with colours that make them seem almost alive and very natural. But it is certainly true that his method of working in these last works is very different from one he enjoyed as a young man. While his early works are executed with a certain finesse and incredible care, and made to be seen both from close up and from a distance, his last works are executed with such large and bold brush-strokes and in such broad outlines that they cannot be seen from close up but appear perfect from a distance.

  Vasari’s last sentence introduces a major new development in the art of painting. Titian was now a complete master of the medium of oil paint and, to show his skill, the objects he painted, where individual brushstrokes are clearly visible close up, make perfect sense when seen from a distance. To his contemporaries, this ability was semi-miraculous. And it was this aspect of the Venetian master’s art that appealed to later artists such as Rubens and Velázquez, both of whom made a close study of the great Titians in the Spanish royal collection.

  Moreover, Titian made painting look easy. The idea of casual elegance or nonchalance was very fashionable at the time. It had been put forward by Baldassare Castiglione, in his highly influential The Courtier, published in 1528, as the ideal way to behave for those living at a princely court, and Titian, acutely aware of his status as an artist working for the most powerful men and women of his time, aspired to the rank of a courtier. Consequently, he wanted to show a similar sense of ease in his paintings.

  Vasari, who worked as both a painter and an architect for the Grand Dukes of Tuscany, understood this very well. He knew that Titian’s seemingly spontaneous way of painting was, in fact, the result of much careful labour:

  And this comes about because although many believe them to be executed without effort, the truth is very different and these artisans are very much mistaken, for it is obvious that his paintings are reworked and that he has gone back over them with colours many times, making his effort evident. And this technique, carried out in this way, is full of good judgment, beautiful and stupendous, because it makes the pictures not only seem alive but to have been executed with great skill concealing the labour.

  The Rape of Europa is a magnificent example of Titian’s late technique. Throughout his career he had experimented with the possibilities of slow-drying and semi-translucent oil paint. He also added numerous glazes which give his paintings an extraordinary transparency and luminosity, and enabled him to achieve an infinite variety of hues and gradations of tone. This technique allowed flexibility; an analysis of the substantial under-drawing in his works shows how often he changed his mind as the work progressed.

  Initially, the artist used a thin white gesso ground into which he drew an outline of the figures. He then proceeded to build up the composition by using numerous layers of pigment, opaque or semi-opaque scumbles (thin or dragged layers of paint) and translucent glazes (thin coats of transparent colour). The lighter passages were painted with impasto (a thick layer of pigments), while the darker ones were painted more thinly. The paint layers would then soak into and practically absorb the gesso ground. This was a very slow and complex process, allowing the paint to dry completely before the next layer of paint was applied.

  Palma Giovane, who completed a number of Titian’s canvases after his master’s death (he was the son of Palma Vecchio, one of the best Venetian painters of the early sixteenth century), gave the best account of the complexities of his technique. It is extremely revealing of how Titian worked.

  ‘He laid in his pictures with a mass of colour, which served as a groundwork for what he wanted to express. I myself have seen such vigorous under-painting in plain red earth for the half tones or in white lead. With the same brush dipped in red, black or yellow he worked up the high parts and in four strokes he could create a remarkably fine figure.’ This freedom of brushwork is very apparent in the hands of the amorini in the Rape of Europa, which have been summarily blocked in.

  Palma continues his description:

  ‘Then he turned the picture to the wall and left it for months without looking at it, until he returned to it and stared critically at it, as if it were a mortal enemy … Thus by repeated revisions, he brought his pictures to a high state of perfection and while one was drying he worked on another. This quintessence of a composition he then covered in many layers of living flesh.’ The complications of Titian’s technique explain why there was such a delay in the delivery of the six poesie to Philip II.

  As Vasari had pointed out, the effect that Titian achieved was one of spontaneity, but, in fact, this was the product of much careful labour. Nevertheless, despite the high praise he accorded Titian, the Tuscan was still determined to prove the superior qualities of the art of disegno in which he had been schooled. Vasari could not resist including the remarks made by Michelangelo when shown the Danae by Titian (the first version belonging to Cardinal Farnese). The Florentine lavished praise on Titian’s style, saying that it

  … pleased him very much but that it was a shame that in Venice they did not learn to draw well from the beginning and that those painters did not pursue their studies with more method. For the truth was, that if Titian had been assisted by art and design as much as he was by nature, and especially in reproducing living subjects, then no one could achieve more or work better, for he had a fine spirit and a lively and entrancing style.

  When Francisco de Vargas, Charles V’s ambassador to Venice, asked the artist why he did not paint in a more refined manner, Titian defended the way in which his original technique singled him out and ensured his fame, replying:

  Sir, I am not confident of achieving the delicacy and beauty of the brushwork of Michelangelo, Raphael, Correggio and Parmigianino; and if I did, I would be judged with them, or else considered to be an imitator. But ambition, which is as natural in my art as in any other, urges me to choose a new path to make myself famous, much as the others acquired their own fame from the way that they followed.

  Titian, of course, was absolutely right to disagree strongly with Michelangelo’s verdict. It was precisely his ability as a colourist as opposed to a draughtsman that was his greatest talent, and one that constitutes his claim to be one of the very greatest Old Masters.

  Titian was famous in his native Venice and enjoyed a life of some splendour in the Biri Grande, the northern quarter of the city. The painter inhabited the top floor of a grand palazzo, from where he could enjoy distant views across the lagoon towards his native Dolomites, which appear through a translucent haze in the background of the Rape of Europa. During the day-time the house was full of activity, with models and sitters coming and going. They were heading for the artist’s studio in his garden. From contemporary accounts this was a well organized space, with all the accoutrements of his trade neatly arranged: the brushes cleaned and sorted, packets of linseed and walnut oil, gums and resins used as varnishes or to manufacture pigments, sacks of pl
aster and wood for stretcher-making, all stacked and sorted. As a maritime city, Titian was able to buy his canvases from the sail-makers who worked in the Arsenal, where the great galleons were built and supplied.

  Titian also capitalized on Venice’s position as centre of the pigment trade in Italy. It was the only city in Italy where there were specialist colour suppliers as opposed to general apothecaries. For an artist with Titian’s reputation and means, he could afford the richest colours to create a sumptuous effect: lead white, brilliant vermilion and lead-tin yellow from Venice itself, earth pigments from Siena and Umbria, malachite from Hungary, scarlet cochineal from Mexico (a dye made from the dried bodies of a Coccus insect found in cactuses) and the extremely expensive ultramarine made from lapis lazuli imported from far-away lands in Asia (present day Afghanistan). Venetians were a trading nation, always open to new ideas. This was the first city in Italy to adopt the novel technique of oil paint, something that had been discovered in the Netherlands in the early fifteenth century. Titian was a master of this medium a meticulous worker who took great trouble to find exactly what he wanted. When he was based in Augsburg, he asked his friend Aretino to bring some red pigment, ‘the kind that so blazes and is so brilliant with the true colour of cochineal that even the crimson of velvet and silk would seem less than splendid in comparison with it’.

  Titian was a highly proficient technician, an absolute master of his trade, but he was also acutely aware that he was more than a mere artist. He therefore made sure that when a visitor came to his studio, he would find the painter dressed as befitted his social position and not in a paint-stained overall. Titian painted a number of self-portraits wearing a fur-lined cloak and adorned with the chains showing his knighthood, with not a paint brush in sight. He depicts himself with a high brow and skullcap to demonstrate the painter’s intellectuality.

  Visitors were amazed that such an immaculately dressed figure could transform his female models, invariably women of low virtue, into goddesses and saints. Shortly after finishing the Rape of Europa, a Florentine visitor to his studio was amazed at the voluptuous beauty of a Mary Magdalen painted for Philip II. He recorded:

  I remember that I told him she was too attractive, so fresh and dewy, for such penitence. Having understood that I meant that she should be gaunt through fasting, he answered laughing that he had painted her on the first day she had entered, before she began fasting, in order to be able to paint her as a penitent indeed, but also as lovely as he could, and that she certainly was.

  What relations Titian enjoyed with his female models has always been an open question. As early as 1522, when the artist had been painting the set of poesie for Alfonso d’Este, there were rumours that he enjoyed their favours. The duke’s agent Jacopo Tebaldi had written to his master: ‘I have been to see Titian, who has no fever at all. He looks well, if somewhat exhausted, and I suspect that the girls whom he paints in different poses arouse his desires – which he then satisfies more than his limited strength permits. Though he denies it.’ Tebaldi’s insinuation is backed up by a painting (now lost) by an anonymous Venetian contemporary entitled Titian and his Courtesan where the artist has placed his hand on the pregnant belly of his companion.

  On the other hand, Titian’s close friend Pietro Aretino, a salacious and gossipy writer, whose scurrilous lampoons of the ruling powers in Italy had driven him to seek refuge in Venice, did not subscribe to this view. Considering his reaction at the sight of Danae, there is little doubt how Aretino would have behaved if he had been in the artist’s shoes: ‘My God, her neck! And her breasts … would have corrupted virgins and made martyrs unfrock themselves … The front of her body drove me wild, but the wonder and marvel which really maddened me were due to her shoulders, loins and other charms.’ But, surprisingly, he defended his friend’s morality in dealing with his models in a letter to the sculptor and architect Jacopo Sansovino, another close friend of Titian: ‘What makes me really marvel at him, is that, whenever he sees fair ladies, and no matter where he is, he fondles them, makes a to-do of kissing them, and entertains them with a thousand juvenile pranks, but goes no further.’

  Whatever the truth, all the evidence suggests that Titian was happily married to Cecilia, a barber’s daughter from his hometown of Cadore, who bore him two sons and two daughters, but she died very young in 1530. Thereafter his household was run by his sister Orsa. The painter certainly enjoyed an enviable lifestyle in his house in Venice. After a day spent painting in his studio Titian loved to entertain his friends in his house. His two closest companions were Pietro Aretino and Jacopo Sansovino, a sculptor turned architect (he was to build the Library and several fine palaces on the Grand Canal). Both originally hailed from Tuscany, but made their names in Venice. The three talented figures formed a literary and artistic triumvirate that dominated Venetian society. Aretino was a brilliant conversationalist with an obscene wit (he was reputed to have died by suffocation laughing at a filthy joke he had just told). He was also a great champion of Titian’s art and had been painted by the artist three times. Sansovino had originally been a sculptor but, after moving to Venice following the Sack of Rome in 1527, he became chief architect to the Serenissima and enjoyed numerous commissions to build churches and palaces all over the city.

  Francesco Priscianese, a visitor to Titian’s house, gave a memorable account of a convivial evening in the spacious garden laid out in front of the house, where the guests included Pietro Aretino, ‘a new miracle of nature, and next to him as great an imitator of nature with the chisel as the master of the feast is with the brush, Messer Jacopo Tatti, called il Sansovino’. Priscianese continues by praising the beauty of the garden and the view towards the island of Murano: ‘This part of the sea, as soon as the sun went down, swarmed with gondolas, adorned with beautiful women, and resounded with the varied harmony and music of voices and instruments, which till midnight accompanied our delightful supper.’

  This delectable lifestyle is indicative of Venice’s status as the richest and most politically stable city in Europe. Titian certainly enjoyed a great deal more freedom living in Venice than he would have done had he obeyed Philip’s wishes and moved to Spain. Not only would he have been subject to the king, but also to the Catholic Church, a much more intrusive organization than in his native Venice. The painter knew that the Council of Trent, held in an imperial town just north of Venice, had greatly increased the power and authority of the Spanish king as secular spearhead of the Catholic revival, with the Inquisition as one of his main weapons. Venetians feared that, despite its reputation for religious toleration, the decrees of the Council would lead to interference in its internal affairs and the persecution of its citizens.

  The contrast between the treatment meted out to the sculptor Leone Leoni, working in Spain, who was imprisoned by the Spanish Inquisition, and Titian’s star pupil Paolo Veronese’s encounter with the Venetian equivalent, was very instructive. Veronese was summoned in 1573 to explain why he had filled his painting of the Last Supper, in the words of the Inquisitor, with ‘buffoons, drunken Germans, dwarfs and other such scurrilities’. The painter was contrite, agreeing with the tribunal’s findings but, in an act of bravado, made just one alteration to the picture, changing the title to Feast in the House of Levi. The Inquisition in Venice accepted this without demur, something that it is impossible to imagine happening in Spain.

  No wonder Titian wished to remain in his native city, enjoying this congenial lifestyle. Venice was the safest city in Italy (since the city’s founding eight centuries earlier, no foreign power had succeeded in invading the Venetian lagoon). The city was still rich, and there were plenty of commissions from the government, the guilds, known as scuole (schools), and wealthy private individuals. In contrast, leading Florentine artists such as Leonardo and Michelangelo left their home town to seek the patronage of powerful rulers elsewhere, Leonardo with the Duke of Milan and Francis I of France, whereas Michelangelo, whose republican sympathies put him at odds with
the ruling Medici, particularly after they became Grand Dukes of Tuscany (he commanded the fortifications of the city when it was besieged by an imperial army supporting the Medici in 1529–30), preferred to serve the papacy in Rome, where his greatest work was to rebuild St Peter’s.

  Titian was, however, an exception among the major Venetian painters – Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione and Palma Vecchio, followed by Tintoretto and Veronese – in his reluctance to execute works for organizations within the city, either the government or the confraternities, charitable foundations that did good works and commissioned paintings for their own buildings. The few paintings that he did complete often led to a dispute over payment for his services, and he was usually extremely late in delivery. Philip II paid him an annual salary far greater than anything he could earn in Venice, and many of his fellow Venetians, no doubt envious of this largesse, considered Titian to be avaricious. This is how he is portrayed by Jacopo Bassano in his Purification of the Temple (National Gallery) where he appears as a grasping moneylender.

  In addition relations between Spain and Venice were rarely amicable. Although there was a great deal of trade between the two countries, with a constant supply of oriental rugs, silks, glassware and gems heading from Venice to the palaces of Philip and his courtiers, Venetians, proud of their independence, knew that they were almost completely surrounded by Habsburg possessions. Philip II and his allies ruled Milan, Genoa, Florence and Naples. The king constantly strove to make an alliance with the Serenissima, intending to create a joint Spanish–Venetian navy which would drive the Turks and their allies from the Mediterranean. This strategy appeared to work when the Spanish–Venetian fleet won a decisive victory at the battle of Lepanto in 1571, but even this alliance did not last. Just two years later, anxious to protect their commercial interests in the Levant, the Venetians changed sides and concluded an alliance with the Turks, much to the consternation of Spain.